Babe Ruth WORLD Series

The Lawrenceburg 13-year-olds beat Grand Fork, N.D., 5-4, to improve to 3-1 in pool play at the Babe Ruth World Series in Williston, N.D., on Tuesday. Lawrenceburg also beat Niskayuna, N.Y., 9-0, late Monday. Lawrenceburg is off Wednesday, but advances to the championship round Friday. Their opponent will be determined today. In Tuesday’s win, Lawrenceburg scored twice in the top of the seventh to overcome 4-3 deficit. Ben Staggs had two hits, while Jacob Hallmark added a triple. Lawrenceburg had 10 hits in the 9-0 win over Niskayuna. Koltar Houser, Lance Pope and Hallmark had doubles in the win.

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SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, PA. — Everything unraveled in a half of an inning Tuesday night, and it proved to be too much for the South Nashville Little League team to overcome.

Sammamish, Wash., did all its scoring in the top of the third inning and held on to eliminate South Nashville with a 6-5 victory at Lamade Stadium.

“That Southeast team is a really good team,” Sammamish manager Rob Chandler said.

Chandler used up the eligibility of his top two pitchers for Thursday’s U.S. losers’ bracket final in order to get past South Nashville.

“That’s something we’ve only done one other time before in our 28 games,” Chandler said.

Sammamish put together six singles, took advantage of two South Nashville errors and escaped a close call on a video review to produce the decisive inning.

Bryce Delay started things off with a blooper between four South Nashville players in shallow right-center field and off the outreached glove of second baseman Blake Kirchenbauer. Sammamish tied the score when Jack Carper lofted a ball down the right-field line that was ruled fair after a close call on Little League’s video review system.

Mercado asked for review after his players told him the ball was a foot foul. It was closer than that, but some replay angles showed that the ball might have been foul.

“They had a hard time believing it was fair,” Mercado said of his players, whom he tried to settle down after the call.

South Nashville fought back from the resulting four-run deficit and got the winning run to the plate before being eliminated.

The Southeast Regional champions return home after finishing fourth among eight teams in the U.S. division. South Nashville won two games by a total of 18 runs between suffering a pair of one-run losses.

Mercado said because of the amount of school time missed already, the team will ask Little League officials for assistance in getting home as soon as possible.

The first 1½ innings left the impression that a longer stay would be necessary as South Nashville tried to duplicate Goodlettsville’s accomplishment of bringing a national title back to Middle Tennessee last summer.

Trae McLemore struck out the first six batters he faced, the first five looking, while throwing 23 of 25 pitches for strikes.

Between striking out the side, McLemore drove in the first run in a two-run first inning.

South Nashville went down in order, and Eastlake batted around in the third to turn the remainder of the game into an uphill battle.

McLemore doubled, then Knox Preston and Robert Hassell drove in runs to immediately cut the deficit to 6-4 after three innings.

Tanner Morgan took over on the mound and shut out Eastlake over the final three innings to give South Nashville a chance.

Ben Pickman’s solo homer with two outs in the bottom of the fourth was the last run the team could manage.

Jack Matheson got a groundout from Pickman, who had also doubled earlier, to end the game.